welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour for the last two years banks toure's have been blocking donations to wiki leaks the organization responsible for some of the biggest news and information leaks in our history i was wiki leaks now planning to work around that blockade so it can

continue revealing the truth to the world and we're just thirteen days to go until america goes over the fiscal cliff addresses across america are asking why president obama chose to put social security cuts on the bargaining table why is the president letting republicans ak away at social security instead of presenting progressive solutions that can help us avoid that cliff. welcome to your take my take live our phone lines are now open so if you want to share an opinion make a comment ask a question live on the air give us a call to zero two nine zero four twenty one thirty four so for a first call of the night mark in toronto canada and mark thanks for calling what's on your mind. i wanted to say i think there are a lot of really good people in the republican party and well meaning people but i've been thinking about. an illustration cover for the new yorker magazine and it

would be the iconic clint eastwood lone gunman. on a stage looking dejected beside an empty chair of an elementary school student i think the republican party finally has to confront their dark passenger and the contradictions in the psyche you know what i mean yeah i do i think you're absolutely right that's that's brilliant thank you for calling and sharing them are much appreciated norm in grass valley california norm welcome to the program i think tommy doing a very fine job keep up the good work thank you. when obama received the nobel peace prize a month or about a month after he was inaugurated i became violently sick here a man is now named man of the year by time magazine at what point do we the people say how can one individual point

a finger at someone else another human being halfway around the world they kill him . that person does not deserve a peace prize where can we go what petition can i sign to have nobel peace prize revoked from his position for that you have to go to the nobel committee and i believe it's in our way. norm thank you for the call i did with regard to the sentiment frankly i have no idea if it's possible even to to revoke a nobel peace prize but with regard to the sentiment. that that is a horrible thing that in the united states of america the president has a has either been given or taken on to himself the power to simply designate another human being as suitable for for killing and civilians as being suitable for collateral damage when we're not in a time of war in a nation with whom we're not at war i find that frightening frankly it concerns me tremendously and i think that americans would be horrified if for example canada

was to decide that they didn't they didn't like some terrorist in new york city and took out a city block in mexico and didn't like all the new york narco terrorists hanging out in phoenix and took out a neighborhood i mean it's just it's a terrible terrible precedent. at the very least if we're going to do assassinations there must be due process there should be a trial in absentia it should be public there should be a conviction and a sentence but then you know you're talking the death penalty it's nothing new in san diego california thanks michael. thanks for the most. media think we need to get you. a fine time here. to the you want to talk about the second amendment. right. cui or some kind of. second amendment.

it stuck. well regulated militia where our. judges dyslexics can to read i mean it can it can teach you. well we told. you you make a perfect point of calling and making it that you know and that is that the second amendment doesn't say everybody has the right to own a gun says in order to maintain a well regulated militia that be necessary for the security of a free state the right of the people to bear arms an obvious. and so we have a rally well regulated militia it's called the national guard it evolved out of local militias over the history of this country i think frankly we should start calling it the national militia instead of the national guard that might cause the light bulb to go off on people who are you know haven't figured this out particularly in the supreme court in the heller case in about five years ago and in

the donald case about three years ago if i'm remembering my years right. the supreme court found in that second amendment that talks about a militia and upset a free state the spirit of free space they found the individual right to have a gun in your home or whatever and i just find it bizarre we i am looking forward to the day when these five right wing wacky doodles on the supreme court at least several of them leave and can be replaced by people appointed hopefully by democratic presidents so we can undo some of the damage they've done alan in seattle washington allan thanks for calling thanks for watching the show with anyone. but thanks for taking my call tom i am a big fan of true cost economics where the extranet all the use of the product or captured within that price for instance with gasoline we would capture the cost of protecting the shipping lanes in the middle east etc then gasoline would cost somewhere around ten dollars a gallon. so it similarly i think we could do the same thing with the ammunition in

the right tools we could. collect all the costs that are borne by our police our court or centers and then put them on the price of a bullet but maybe if you want to shoot a ten twenty two ruger that's just plain cans there wouldn't be much cost because not a lot of people are dying from that bullet but if you want a hollow point cop killer bullets going to end up costing you a thousand dollars. that's an excellent suggestion alan thank you for that for calling and making it a variation on that is the suggestion that. to the extent that we're going to define you know for example have an assault weapons ban i'm frankly more concerned about ammunition i think that that's the way to regulate the damage that weapons are doing that these these weapons of mass destruction are doing i think you're absolutely right twenty two is. much less likely to be used in a crime than it is a forty five or forty caliber thirty eight caliber nine millimeter dug in camden

maine hey doug. cameron i. hear you just fine i just wondered why. there's such a big. presence has already been the assault weapons. the whole way and security. i didn't know that he had that authority what what am i missing. you have a whole word security in place to protect ships. against any threat. so you're suggesting that he could simply declare that a certain types of weapons of terror assault weapons for example. are a threat to the national security and under the patriot act declare them illegal exactly it's interesting doug thanks for the call i frankly don't i don't know if

that would be possible practical or whatever but i reluctant to go down that road because that's putting again more power in the executive branch in a big fan of power being as close to the people as possible which would which means congress and that's the founders were thinking too that's why all legislation has to originate the house of representatives the only branch that is one hundred percent fully thrown out of office and elected every two years duke in st louis missouri. yeah i was just curious about. why we have so much coverage of that horrible school shooting but when these bankers on wall street. the big bankers when they rip us all off blindly why isn't the media cover them to cover that situation. it's a great question do thanks for calling and making and making that point actually it's sort of a point as much as a question i would suggest to you that what we are seeing and what we have been

seen since the first few hours or at least the first day i mean certainly what we were seeing on saturday and sunday louise i turn the t.v. on a few times through the weekend and i call it disaster porn i think it's and i really think it's pornographic particularly you know how did you feel about that let's try to get somebody on camera breaking down and let's you know it's just. you know enough already. joe in chico california a joke. tom our you talk thank you you want to talk about arming teachers. yes but it's going to stay. in this country put children through the school system and is continuing to do so right now as we speak and it concerns americans i believe we should all be standing up and demanding teachers as part of their curriculum to become teachers be propitiated firearms and protect our children ok let me ask you a question joe if. if the teacher in this classroom had been carrying

a forty five on her hip at all times and if she had succeeded in making it through the years that she had been teaching without ever falling out discharging without any kid ever making off with it with it without have there ever being an accident and if it was on her hip at the moment that this young man with the bushmaster ar fourteen for a ar fifteen burst into the classroom and pointed that semiautomatic weapon at her . what could she have done. she could have relied on the fact that every other single teacher in that campus would have been armed and willing to respond as well to protect those children. so in other words he's he can he can get off one hundred rounds in a minute or three and she has to place her hope that some other teacher in some other part of the building is going to hear that gunfire and run toward it you know

in columbine there was. in columbine there was an armed guard and you know and who is near the shooting you know what he did when the shooting happened. it probably ran he did he ran away i mean. that's human instinct please don't kill me joe i think it's i think we just you know we've gone nuts with all these guns it's time to say enough already look at look at the australian they they bought the government bought back six hundred thousand guns they said you can only have a gun if you can prove you need it that was in one thousand nine hundred eight under a conservative brand new conservative prime minister they haven't had a mass shooting since then but armed robbery and violent crime and. that that's nonsense in the escalation of armed robbery in violent crime in australia has been consistent with that of other countries around the world had nothing to do with guns joe thanks a lot for the call that's it for your take my take alive thanks for all of your calls if we didn't get to your calls tonight tries back next week. coming up progresses across america are to happy with president obama right now as he

continues to cave in to pressure from the right in order to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff was the real reason why he chose to put social security cuts on the table i'll tell you in tonight's daily to. the worst if you are going through the only white house of a. radio guy for a minute. i want what we're about to give you've never seen anything like this i'm told. listen to me.

i think. in the best of the rest of the news over the past several years wiki leaks has published thousands and thousands of pages of original source material revealing the truth in some of the world's biggest events political debates private organizations armed conflicts and political figures unfortunately reported truth

sometimes upsets people and institutions like bank stars and their giant multinational banks major u.s. financial institutions have been blocking private donations to wiki leaks for the past two years weekly leaks of the nonprofit organization relies on donations and contributions to survive over the past two years ninety five percent of contributions to wiki leaks have stopped because of this banks embargo however it looks like wiki leaks may finally be getting some support to continue reporting the truth and enlighten in the world joining me now via skype to talk more about wiki leaks a new source of funding is kristen graff and robinson investigative journalist and official wiki leaks representative kristen welcome to the program. things with me first of all julian a songes still in the the ecuadorian embassy in london how is he doing. he's doing fine not considering the situation he has. been busy working and. the that he used to do well in the inside the embassy and used getting quite

accustomed to being under a difficult situation before he went into the ambush he was under house arrest for quite some time so he's going to cross into it but equally well how has wiki leaks been functioning over the past two years and maintaining their funding when this this blockade by the major credit card companies has been in place. well as you mentioned in your opening i mean you know it has been quite difficult we have reserves to rely on when the blockade was in close upon us in december twenty ten so we decided to scale down dramatically. so we've been basically living on reserves of course it affects an organization that relies only on the nation's one mighty five percent of its revenues are taken away but we have been the we've been doing ok we have continued to work and of course we had to spend quite a lot of resources on fighting this banking blockades in many in many venues and

we've had a great success than we had court the big three in iceland which is now pending that should be in court and we will bring a court case in denmark we have been sending a complaint to the european commission we have won back a charity status of which was taken away from we've all fallen foundation was doing there were taken donations for us in germany we have been able to open a. credit card payment system in france with the help of good friends and now this week a new initiative. is is going to extraordinary will so we have to fight is not just for the case but we can tell it for and tell us about the freedom of the press. foundation. in this initiative we have. individuals that are supporting that we can use and other organizations fighting for transparency

and fighting against a corrupt a corporate or government secrecy so it has our charities status in the us so every donation there is talk to you and it works in that way that people who donate to that foundation and they can choose how they distribute their. donation between the organizations and projects that are listed it's on the site so. the quitting of companies have not tried to stop it yes if they do it would be met with that of course an open court group supporting a number of other organizations as well. who are working for freedom of the press are any of them directly affiliated with wiki leaks or are these just completely independent organizations the fruit of the press. foundation dot org a supporting. it is that these are independent organizations and the foundation is

independent for most of us will be on the board you have prominent members and probably individuals but i do care about transparency like daniel ellsberg the importance of blower who gave us the pentagon papers in the seventy's and indians are represented from the evidence when they go from here foundation and you have to john ku's like so there's an independent foundation it's. supporting in general the fight against corruption and its fight for transparency chris this is what the president obama did problems back in the days when he was elected in two thousand and eight. and that hasn't entirely fulfilled shall we say christine having said spank you so much for being with us tonight. thank you.

it's the good the bad in the very very kind to a sense just slowly ugly the good senator barbara boxer senator boxer plans to create a clearing house on climate to help organize legislative efforts to address climate change at a meeting yesterday boxer said we are going to review the latest information we are going to work on supporting a major bill we're going to work on various smaller provisions that we think will move us forward and focus on green jobs energy efficiency and making sure that we get the carbon out of the air looks like congress might finally be getting its act together when it comes to combating climate change and global warming and so to keep up the work the bad florida's stand your ground shoot first one man in florida is using that state's so-called stand your ground shoot first law as a defense for shooting a customer who was complaining about slow service at a fast food restaurant in st petersburg the alleged shooter got into an argument

with the complaining customer after the argument got heated multiple shots were fired fortunately no one died it was just another example of why stand your ground shoot first laws are so absurd and so dangerous they promote more gun violence and it's time they were overturned and the very very ugly staffer john jones the republican party chair an allen county florida as admitted that republicans in florida intentionally tried to suppress the votes of that state's college students in last month's election in an interview with a local paper joy jones accused. of bringing in students to florida to swing the election in the admission comes after other florida republican officials openly acknowledge their voter suppression efforts were directed at benteen democratic voters from voting democrats can prevent this kind of election rigging from happening again in two thousand and sixteen because preventing thousands of college

students and citizens from voting is very very. despite not adding a single penny to the national debt and having a two point six trillion dollars surplus which of talking about social security trust fund president obama put social security insurance on the table moving the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations even deeper into republican home turf think about it we're debating just how many rich people will get to keep george w. bush's tax cuts we're debating just how many seniors poor people and disabled people are going to suffer and how badly they're going to suffer when their social security insurance is gone we're debating which social welfare programs and

unemployment is are going to expire this is the kind of debate you'd expect between a center right republican a far right republican between two eisenhower barry goldwater not between a democrat and a republican on these grounds republicans win every time and the working class loses every time instead president obama should be putting progressive solutions on the table things like a financial transaction tax you know on every every action on wall street every time this buy or sell something just a little t.v. to jack's it would reduce the debt by one point eight trillion dollars over the next decade attacks like this one thousand nine hundred sixty nine hundred sixty four or cutting off taxpayer subsidies to big oil which total forty billion dollars over ten years are ending the massive capital gains loophole which sets income taxes on hedge fund managers and vulture capitalist like mitt romney and people like paris hilton at a maximum fifteen percent less than half of what actual working people pay or

common sense cuts to our bloated wasteful defense budget. or how about raising the minimum wage that would stimulate the economy and those over the long haul reduce our debt because more people would be paying more taxes or breaking up the big banks to prevent more costly deficit expanding bailouts in the future or how about creating a single payer health care system would cut in half our deficit inducing health care costs if all of these things were on the table that this would be a robust debate that reflects the political leanings of a center left nation but they're not on the table which shows not just the weakness of president obama but also the weakness of the progressive movement when compared with the hard right movement which is funded by cranky billionaires like the koch brothers karl rove and sheldon adelson labor unions which have historically been the vanguard of the progressive movement have been crippled and independent media

including print radio and t.v. which used to carry the voices of average working people across the nation through locally owned radio and t.v. stations have been bankrupted and sold off to large corporate media outlets that spew lies in this information to promote the billionaires agenda essentially the progressive counterbalances in america which for several generations kept in check the corporatists who wanted to destroy f.d.r.'s new deal and lyndon johnson's great society they were held in line in the democratic by the democratic party they've been removed. when ronald reagan busted patco in one thousand nine hundred one he didn't just kick off a three decade assault on labor unions he also kicked off a three decade assault once progressive democratic party this is solid is now reaching its peak as republicans and president obama prepared a car of up the crown jewel of the new deal social security insurance until a new counterbalance is stronger than the creep toward the political right as

reflected our current fiscal cliff debate is going to continue relentlessly president obama has given in to republicans over and over again during his first four years in office we need to remind him that he's the president he's armed with the bully pulpit and he's no longer facing reelection he's free to be true to his progressive community organizing roots there's still hope f.d.r. didn't campaign on bringing revolutionary change to america in one nine hundred thirty two he was forced to do it by a nation suffering through a great depression and radicalized by the damage done to them by millionaires and banks. the new deal was in part a response to occupations they were called hoovervilles and a genuine outrage across america about the looting of our nation by the very very rich. today the occupy movement organized labor and the environmental movement have begun the difficult work to rebuild that progressive base that can counter the billionaire's money were barely not strong enough yet to push congress in the white

house to pick up genuine progressive reforms but if enough of us show up over and over again that they make let's make it sooner rather than later and that's the way it is that i wednesday december nineteenth two thousand and twelve don't forget democracy begins with you and your it. with. the edge of human capability. struggling with a dream. to become. for. all. is he.

i.